Hello folks!
9 December, Saturday (that's tomorrow!), at 3pm, we will be hosting
Betty Warrington-Kearsley's poetry session where the English-born,
Singapore-bred poet will be reading from her poetry collection "Red
Lacquered Chopsticks".
About Betty Warrington-Kearsley
Betty was born in Cheshire, England, of a Singapore Chinese mother
and English father. She was educated in Singapore where she was
conceived and where she spent her holidays under the tutelage of
her maternal grandparents in their family home in the Chinese
fishing village of Telok Mata Ikan which now no longer exists.
After graduating from St. Hilda's, then an Anglican mission school,
she went to England to study physiotherapy. She returned to
Singapore and worked with the RAF and the Australian Red Cross
before heading back to England for further studies and experience.
She then emigrated to Canada as an officer in the Canadian Forces
Medical Services where she served for the next 24 years, twelve of
them as the Forces' Chief Physiotherapist. After retiring from the
Canadian Forces she worked with the Arthritis Society. She finally
ceased her physiotherapy practice in 1996 to write, full time.
Betty has travelled widely, visiting over 30 countries in Europe
and Asia, Middle East and Africa, North and South America, and
Australia - sometimes on business, sometimes family related,
sometimes to explore and learn, and always with a notebook at hand.
She lives in Ottawa but continues to travel at every opportunity.
She also enjoys reading, walking, gardening, and sitting in the
garden, in a timeless space between her Zen-like rocks, absorbing
the spirit of "Life, the Universe and Everything" - in all its
seasons. She writes, as her husband says, because there are things
which must be said, and poetry is a most powerful medium. Always
the student, Betty continues to study and hone her skills. While
her works in progress include a memoir of her Chinese mother and
life in the early days of Singapore, essays and short stories, she
presently concentrates on poetry which she began writing in
childhood. She has written of her experiences in Africa, South-East
Asia, Japan, Chile and Canada, but mainly writes of humanity and
the universal human condition.
Her poems and other writing have won prizes and been published in
Canada, the United States, United Kingdom and Japan. Her feature
article won first prize in the National Capital Writing Contest in
2005, and in 2004 she was recipient of the Diana Brebner Poetry
award and co-winner of the Ray Burrell poetry contest. Her poems
were also short-listed in the 2004 Shaunt Basmaijan Poetry Award.
Betty's debut collection of poems, Red Lacquered Chopsticks, was
published by TSAR
Publications in October 2006.
Reading at The Arts House
You may also be interested to know that Ms Warrington-Kearsley is
invited by the National Book Development Council for a poetry
reading from her recently published collection of poems, Red
Lacquered Chopsticks at the Arts House at Old Parliament on
December 8.
Red Lacquered Chopsticks
Here's more about her book --
http://www.tsarbooks.com/Frontlist2006.htm#Red.
And here's a taster of her poetry --
http://www.softblow.com/wkearsley.html
See you tomorrow at your friendly neighbourhood bookstore perched
on a nostalgic shophouse!
XOXO
the BooksActually kids
--
BooksActually
// 125A Telok Ayer Street
Singapore 068594
// +65 6221 1170
